"Commentary from P.M. Carpenter"

July 26, 2017

Can we please fast-forward to the good stuff?

A former Justice Department official and Trump supporterdescribes the president's public assaults on Jeff Sessions as "incredibly self-destructive behavior."

A current Justice Department official says it is "just insanity."

Ross Douthat's description tops them both. "Trump’s campaign against his attorney general … is an insanely stupid exercise. It is a multitiered tower of political idiocy, a sublime monument to the moronic, a gaudy, gleaming, Ozymandian folly."

Indeed, from Shelley's sonnet: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Adds Douthat: "[Trump is] clearly impaired…. Pointing this out is wearying and repetitive, but still it must be pointed out…. This president should not be the president, and the sooner he is not, the better."

And that's why I pray to God as well as the ghost of some demented Machiavelli that Trump just gets on with firing Sessions, so that the new AG can then get on with firing Bob Mueller.

"All hell would break loose," says one House Republican. "The American people would demand we do something," says another.

We doubt not that all hell would break loose and that the American people would demand something be done. What we don't know is the "something" that congressional Republicans would do, if anything. I'm for accelerating the answer to that question.

Comments

A former Justice Department official and Trump supporterdescribes the president's public assaults on Jeff Sessions as "incredibly self-destructive behavior."

A current Justice Department official says it is "just insanity."

Ross Douthat's description tops them both. "Trump’s campaign against his attorney general … is an insanely stupid exercise. It is a multitiered tower of political idiocy, a sublime monument to the moronic, a gaudy, gleaming, Ozymandian folly."

Indeed, from Shelley's sonnet: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Adds Douthat: "[Trump is] clearly impaired…. Pointing this out is wearying and repetitive, but still it must be pointed out…. This president should not be the president, and the sooner he is not, the better."

And that's why I pray to God as well as the ghost of some demented Machiavelli that Trump just gets on with firing Sessions, so that the new AG can then get on with firing Bob Mueller.

"All hell would break loose," says one House Republican. "The American people would demand we do something," says another.

We doubt not that all hell would break loose and that the American people would demand something be done. What we don't know is the "something" that congressional Republicans would do, if anything. I'm for accelerating the answer to that question.